The Great Game

by O. J. Lowe

  He pointed at the list again. “And they had to get off the island somehow. If you examine the passenger manifestos, I imagine…”

  “Holy crap,” Okocha said. “That’s impressive.” He paused for a moment, considering things in silence. “It also explains why they might have wanted Rocastle back. I wouldn’t want him telling us these things if he was working for me. It explains why he couldn’t pitch to Maddley either. He was on the run.”

  “Hello, is that Madame Ulikku?” Okocha asked into the caller. Between them, they’d gotten a decent list together of all the callers that they either had confirmed to have left on a Reims ship or who had taken some sort of swipe at the establishment, a competitor or the system following a negative result. There’d been a fair few over the weeks of the tournament so far. Privately Nick blamed the media, forcing the loser in front of the cameras when the blood was still burning hot. Just because a lot of people took part in spirit calling didn’t mean that they had the temperament for it. Nick was running down video footage, Okocha had made the call to the family of the most prominent name on the list.

  “Good, good. Yeah, this is Agent Okocha with Unisco, I just need to ask you a few quick quest… Yeah, it is a Vazaran name. Yeah, I do come from there. Nice place, I know. Madame Ulikku, it’s about your…” Nick glanced sideways at this bit. He wondered how Okocha was going to deal with it tastefully. Reda Ulikku, that crazed Varykian had had that androgyny thing going on and although his bio officially listed him as male, it was hard to tell what sort of reaction bringing it up would get. Word of mouth told you all sorts of things.

  “It’s about Reda Ulikku, a relation of yours I believe. The name came up in the context of one of our investigations and I just wondered if you’d heard from him recently?” Nick nodded his approval at Okocha and settled back to watch his reactions. “No, no, he’s likely not in any trouble but we’re just taking precautions you see. Yeah, I’m sure he’s a lovely boy. Okay. Oh, that sounds nice. Yep. Yep. I see. Alright. Nice. Okay.”

  As he disconnected the call, Okocha let out a big sigh of frustration. “Bloody typical woman. Talk all day when it’s not her footing the bill. Anyway, she said he got in touch about three weeks ago after he was knocked out, he said he’d gotten an offer from some big company about sponsorship and he was going to be out of touch thinking about it.”

  “Well that sounds promising,” Nick said. “A few more?” He said it lightly but he knew that they had to. If they established a pattern, a series of connections then they could take it to Arnholt. And then things would get interesting.

  “We have a comprehensive list of all these individuals who have gone off the grid following contact with Reims,” Nick said, looking his boss in the eye. “This isn’t including Darren Maddley, but we’ve got Reda Ulikku, Weronika Saarth, Sophie Black, Paul Foster, Emma Johnson, Stewart Platt, Buck Brady… None of them are available. Most of them were good enough to make it here but they were roundly spanked when they did. They must have had a tempting offer.”

  “We have passenger records from Reims issued ships,” Okocha said. “All of them left on them, all bar Ulikku and Saarth in the company of Harvey Rocastle. All of them displayed a sense of agitation live in the media in sense of dissatisfaction. Saarth complained that her opponent beat her with a spirit he hadn’t even claimed and was clamouring for the rules to be changed. Ulikku claimed Arventino threw her bout against her brother. Sophie Black said that the ICCC had given her a tough pot because her father had annoyed Ritellia in the past…”

  “Doesn’t bode well for any kids Kate Kinsella might have,” Arnholt said thoughtfully, before looking back across the files in front of him. “Anyway, I can’t…”

  “Reims ships were also on the island at the same time as the two major terrorist incidents, as well as one on the day that Sharon Arventino was murdered,” Nick continued. “And there’s the little matter of Claudia Coppinger being the crazy bitch who tried to murder Maddley and Wade.”

  “You’re absolutely sure about this?” Arnholt said. “Because…” He let it hang for several moments.

  “It’s her,” Nick said. “Can’t fake body language easily. It’s something you need to work at and she wasn’t even trying. A dozen little things adding up to one picture.”

  “Huh,” Arnholt mused. “So, with all this in mind, what do we intend to do about it? I can have an arrest warrant issued but most of this is circumstantial at best and I’m not sure whether it would hold up long term. We don’t know her motives, other than some vagueness involving a mythical island and delusions of grandeur, neither of which are a crime. We’ll have tipped our hand and it will all have been for nothing.”

  “It’s a tricky one,” Okocha said. “We need a plan.”

  “Sir,” Nick said. “I didn’t want to spread this out widespread. Just in case. I think the fewer people who know about this the better. I trust Okocha. He was the only one who could help me. If he goes bad, then we’re all screwed.” He shot a sideways glance at him. “No offence.”

  “None taken.”

  “And I believe in you to do the right thing,” Nick said. “If I can’t put you above suspicion…”

  “I appreciate your loyalty, Agent Roper but you absolutely shouldn’t do that.” Arnholt sighed. “Still, I agree with you. The less people that know about this the better. Things can’t be accidentally leaked that way. I asked what we should do, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’ll flush her out.”

  “I’ll do it,” Nick said. “I’ll find some way of getting my displeasure at the current system across, do it in front of the five kingdoms media and see what happens. Based on current form, I should get an offer. It might get me in through the door, I could get something we need to blow this whole thing open.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Arnholt asked.

  “Honestly?” Nick replied. “No idea.” He meant it too. “But I’ll think of something. It’s got to be something natural and spontaneous. It can’t look too staged or they might suspect something. If we’re right.” They’d trained him in improvisation as well. Time to put it to good use.

  “A big if,” Okocha said. “I think we might be on track but I also think that we might be horribly reading too much into stuff here that we probably shouldn’t be.”

  “Yes, it’s going to be one or the other,” Arnholt said. “Every gamble can be split down into that fifty-fifty chance. Keep all the odds you want, always remember it’ll either happen or it won’t. We’ve suffered too much here to brush it all off as coincidence. Agent Roper, I am giving you an order to do what you can to crack this whole thing open. Do whatever you need to.”

  He paused, his expression softened and he leaned forward in his seat. He almost looked father-like in his demeanour. “And one more thing, Agent Roper… Nick. I’m sorry for your loss. My condolences.”

  Nick bowed his head, grateful for the words. “Thank you, sir.”

  The twenty-ninth day of Summerpeak.

  Nick truly hadn’t had an idea what he would do at the time. He’d mulled it over for at least a day after that, it had been the first thing he’d thought about on waking from troubled sleep and the last conscious thought he’d held before trying to enter that troubled state. And it still hadn’t come until the day of Sharon’s funeral and the inspiration had hit him almost as hard as he’d hit Ritellia.

  Pulling a punch wasn’t an easy thing to do and make it still look genuine. There was a way to hit someone without breaking a hand and that was to use the elbows or the forearms. The human hand contained some of the softest bones in the body, the fingers were quite delicate in comparison to the thick bone that made up a human skull. But a simple spirit caller wouldn’t have known that and so he’d thrown a punch, trying to make it look as ungainly as possible. He’d seen the look on Arnholt’s face, he’d winked at him as they’d taken him away. It had been a gamble.

  And when Jake Costa had come for him, he’d known it had paid off…


  Chapter Fifty-Nine. The Semi Finals.

  “I always find the semi-finals to be the last chance for shocks in the tournament. Once that’s out the way, you’ve got a fifty-fifty chance, it’s usually the two callers who’ve deserved to get there the most. You’ve got half a chance of calling the winner. Out here in the semis though, anything can happen. It’s all about who deals with the occasion the best.”

  Choksy Mulhern speaking from the pundit couch before the first semi-final bout between Theobald Jameson and Katherine Sommer.

  The thirtieth day of Summerpeak.

  The whistle blew and Scott watched as Theobald Jameson and Katherine Sommer went for each other in the first of the semi-final bouts of the Competitive Centenary Calling Challenge Cup, their spirits tearing across the grassy battlefield, ready to lay into each other.

  Scott had made it a personal task to be here for this. This stage of the competition was a little unusual in that the last three contestants competed in a round robin for the chance to fight in the final, they each fought each other and the top two advanced on. He was here to watch Jameson and Sommer, before he fought Jameson himself and then Sommer last.

  Privately he was pleased with that. Common consensus was that those who fought consecutively had a slightly better chance than those who to wait between their bouts. Theo had been given the so-called favoured draw because he would complete his bouts first. Scott wasn’t sure. If Theo lost his two bouts, he wouldn’t have to do much against Kitti in the last bout. He could pretty much throw it, learn her strategies and take it to the final where he’d put it all in. He wouldn’t be the first person to do that. These bouts were one spirit each, winner took the points. Not that he’d want to throw it but sometimes you need to employ strategy a little more judiciously than normally necessary.

  Both callers had chosen wolves to fight for them, strangely enough. Not the same breed, but the same species. Theo’s wolf was thickly coated, fur the colour of iron and one eye left white by a ferocious scar. Scott had seen images of wolves like it, he got the impression they lived in a forest environment. Meanwhile Sommer’s wolf was easily bigger than its opponent, despite the coat not looking as thick. What the thinness of its fur emphasised was the contour of the muscles beneath its pelt. Crucially in telling them apart, Sommer’s wolf had both eyes, they glow like embers against the coal-coloured fur. Both wolves hit each other, the one eyed one going for the throat.

  With a nimbleness that belied its big bulk, the svartwolf… Scott had heard the commentator in the stadium call it that… had darted away and spat a great gob of fire towards its one-eyed opponent. It had been Theo’s turn to call a dodge and the grass still smouldered as the fires licked away at it. The one-eyed wolf bared its fangs, the muzzle strained and twitching under the growls. It was meant to look intimidating. Whether it would intimidate the opponent or not, Scott didn’t know.

  He couldn’t help noticing with some bemusement it looked to be a mirror of Theo’s style. He’d had run-ins with the cocky arrogant son of a bitch before the tournament, once or twice at least, and he’d always managed to grate on Scott. In his opinion, he was the absolute worst example of what a spirit caller should be, brusque and standoffish as well as downright unpleasant when engaged in battle.

  Of course, the flip side was that he’d won a lot more bouts than Scott had. So maybe he had a point. In another life, Scott could have been like him. But he hadn’t and he wasn’t.

  Everyone knew that Theo had been training with Anne Sullivan for some of the tournament and well, it showed. Scott had fought Anne Sullivan before and she’d not just beaten him on all previous occasions, she’d absolutely destroyed him in efficient fashion. Admittedly some of them had been quite a while ago but still, it rankled. He’d look forward to knocking out her pupil. And maybe something else, if the rumours in those blogs that Mia read were anything to go by. Note to self, he thought, never let Pete know that you’ve just thought that.

  Across the last few days, Pete had slowly started to come back out of his shell a bit, he’d promised to come to Scott’s two fights here and for that he was grateful. Having his buddy back would be a blast, he knew it’d happen sooner or later if he gave it time. There was nothing else he could do but that. Pete wouldn’t get over it overnight; Scott knew for a fact that given the same situation he’d be struggling as well so that Pete was slowly improving was impressive. He was glad that he was improving, he hated seeing his best bud like this.

  More gobs of fire came the one-eyed wolf’s way and yet none of them came close to landing, the smaller wolf too was just as agile on its feet and was easily outpacing any blasts that came its way. If Kitti Sommer looked bothered by it, she wasn’t showing it. She just stood there, chewing her gum, manicured fingers tucked into the waistband of her jeans, one leg crossed over the other. If there had been something to lean on, doubtless she would have been. This might have been a training exercise for all the stress and worry she showed in her demeanour.

  Privately Scott envied that, as another fireball went wide. He’d been chewing down his nails to the quick for the last few days, trying to fight off the nerves. Nerves were good, he’d heard that somewhere. If he was stressed out, if he was worried, then it’d only urge him on to battle twice as hard. That was the hope anyway. He’d need everything to get past these two. He knew he was already being talked about as the underdog in this pool and it was starting to aggravate him. He might not have the trophies to show it but he was just as good as either of them. He’d need to prove it here though.

  The svartwolf did something very strange following the next missed attack, it let the fireball go and then followed up with a sudden beam of pure blue-white ice that shot across the field, leaving miniature snowflakes on the grass. The one-eyed wolf sprang to evade it but the svartwolf followed it up through the air with the rake of the beam, focusing it tightly on the opponent and determined not to give the enemy any chance of escape.

  Theo’s wolf rolled to the side, a tight controlled motion and then shot back an attack of its own. The ice beam died away, the uniblast tearing into the svartwolf’s flesh, burning away fur and filling the stadium with the stink of broiled meat and the eerie sole howl of a wounded wolf. It made Scott’s skin go bumpy even in the relatively hot heat of the Vazaran tropics. A weird sensation, it lasted only briefly but that made it no less unsettling.

  Apparently ignorant of its wounds, the svartwolf lunged out from a standing position, great paws tearing up the earth beneath its claws as it sprang down on its one-eyed opponent, the difference in their size even more palpable as they closed in on each other. The one-eyed wolf hadn’t stayed stationary, it too had charged and it hit the larger opponent square in the stomach like a furry cannon blast, jaws ripping away at the exposed underbelly. The svartwolf let out a woofing sound, Scott thought he heard a crack amplified about the arena many times over and suspected broken ribs before the svartwolf got off a blast of fire towards the smaller wolf, singing the tail. Another yelp of pain broke through the arena, the svartwolf’s jaws came down to close in on the scrawny neck of the smaller wolf.

  Or it would have had the one-eyed wolf not rolled aside, dropped down to its stomach and spun out the way, one powerful back leg kicking out to catch it in the muzzle. Scott raised an eyebrow at that, a nice move he had to admit. It wasn’t something a beast would expect in the wild, Sommer hadn’t seen it coming either judging by the way her spirit was now spitting out its own teeth. Up around him somewhere, the stadium announcer was commenting about how this was the first time he’d really seen someone give Sommer the run-around like this. Normally she was already imposing her will onto the opponent, taking control of the bout.

  He’d be fighting her second, Scott knew that might be the deciding bout and he studied her, not entirely sure what he was looking for. It was hard to avoid focusing on her looks, she might have been Mia’s older sister. He could see some clear similarities between them in their choices of clothing, jewellery and bod
y art. They even didn’t look a million miles different, both slender, both attractive, both dark haired. Kitti Sommer looked like she liked it dirty in the bedroom and she would be just as eager to return the favour in kind.

  He’d been lost in his thoughts, he’d almost missed the way the one-eyed wolf had sprang up and landed on the much larger canine’s back, digging claws and teeth in viciously, tearing away at fur and flesh. Blood shot up out in a crimson spray, staining the one-eyed wolf’s muzzle and face. The svartwolf went a bit berserk at that, bucking and jinking about to try and tear it off, suddenly panicked and the crowd went silent as if anticipating something special happening. It was not a pleasant silence, Scott noted, if you were in the section that was cheering out their hearts for a Kitti Sommer victory. Most of them appeared to be guys of a certain age and style choice. Most of them had tattoos and, this made him smirk, they weren’t even good tattoos. They looked like they’d done them themselves with a poor-quality ink gun and gritted their teeth through the pain, even as their hands shook with the agony. Most had beards. Most looked like the idea of exercise was an alien notion. Premesoir burntnecks in the extreme. Scott smirked and settled back in his seat.

  Then, summoning strength and poise from somewhere, the svartwolf found a moment and twisted the one-eyed lupine down off its back and there was a dull thud as its body hit the ground. Some sections of the crowd broke into applause, a little too enthusiastic for Scott’s liking considering it wasn’t even close to approaching a knockout. Still the one-eyed wolf looked like it was struggling to move following the rough landing, Theo’s right eye was twitching badly like he was ready to lose the plot over the whole thing. He can’t have been happy, Scott noted. He should have had this wrapped up by now, what with the way the whole thing has gone down. He’s been on top for most of it and now it looks like he might have blown it.